For a period of 85 years, the M Street/Dunbar High School was an academically elite, all-black public high school in Washington, D.C. As far back as 1899, its students came in first in citywide tests given in both black and white schools. Over this 85-year span, approximately 80 percent of M Street/Dunbar's graduates went on to college, even…

A substantial amount of research examines the benefits of high school college-credit attainment programs against non-participation. The growth in popularity of these programs, particularly Advanced Placement (AP) and dual enrollment (DE), has them competing against one another for student attention. However, students, schools, and policymakers do…

The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 set in motion a series of major new initiatives to equalize funding across the Commonwealth, improve the quality of teaching, and strengthen accountability for school performance. Among other important innovations, MERA established the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) to inform…

Almost 7 million young Americans (age 16-24) are insufficiently attached to school or work. Based on conservative estimates, we can generate over $1 billion just by helping a mere 0.1 percent earn a high school credential and complete their first year of college through Back on Track Designs. This brief lays out the cost of setting up these GED-…

Every school day, nearly 7,000 students become dropouts. Annually, that adds up to about 1.2 million students who will not graduate from high school with their peers as scheduled. Lacking a high school diploma, these individuals will be far more likely than graduates to spend their lives periodically unemployed, on government assistance, or…

Solving America's dropout crisis requires immediate, drastic action. Intractable as the dropout problem may seem, recognition of its magnitude has created an environment ripe for action. Most notably, federal regulations adopted in 2008 require states to use more accurate ways of counting dropouts and holding districts and schools more accountable…

In 1997, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced an ambitious plan to open 13 International Baccalaureate Diploma Programs (IBDP) in neighborhood high schools throughout the city. Hoping to replicate the success achieved in the long-standing IB program at Lincoln Park High School, the scale of the IB experiment was unmatched by any other school…

For young people entering the twenty-first-century job market, high school graduation is no longer the finish line, but the starting line. While one-third of students will fail to graduate from high school, too many students who do graduate and make it to the postsecondary starting line find that they are underprepared for postsecondary work. A…

The Urban Institute conducted an implementation and participant-outcomes evaluation of the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (ANSEP). ANSEP is a multi-stage initiative designed to prepare and support Alaska Native students from middle school through graduate school to succeed in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Education Appropriations Bill Signed into Law: U.S. Department of Education to Receive $1 Billion Increase in…

Sallie Mae has conducted "How America Pays for College" annually since 2008, providing information about the resources American families invest in an undergraduate college education. This study focuses particularly on the planning and payment behaviors in a given academic year. Now in its seventh year, the study provides a compelling…

A school-family-community partnership to improve student achievement was examined at a comprehensive high school located in a low income urban community in Long Island City, New York. In this causal comparative analyses study, the researcher examines the effect of a school-family-community partnership on the educational outcomes of economically…

To address concerns about low graduation rates and a lack of workforce readiness, states and districts have been experimenting with different models of high school reform. One of the most popular models has been the Early College High School (ECHS) model, small schools that blur the line between high school and college. Since 2002, over 200 ECHSs…

The study aimed to examine teachers' and students' views on the impact of the Expository Reading and Writing Course (ERWC) on students' college readiness and on teaching practices. Literature in the areas of college readiness, critiques of the English curriculum at the secondary level, and a review of research on the effects of ERWC are…

This final report updates the report "Upward Bound Math-Science: Program Description and Interim Impact Estimates" published in 2007 (Olsen et al. 2007). The 2007 interim report contained descriptive findings from a survey of Upward Bound Math-Science (UBMS) grantees from the late 1990s at the time of the study's initiation and impact estimates…